109Then there’s India’s Ministry of Education. It’s hard to believe it exists in
the same world as Japan’s. Indian officials have proposed building 500,000 new
schools over the next decade, including at least 1,000 new universities, to accom-
modate the country’s burgeoning youthful population. But they’ll never get the
approval; the task would consume several times the government’s entire budget.
Instead, the country will try to create between 10 million and 18 million new
jobs a year at a time when many of its newly formed technology jobs, such as call
center staffing, are being threatened by technological disruption and AI.
Most countries today fall into one of two groups, defined by their demo-
graphic problems. Old-population societies such as Japan, China, Russia, and
most Western European countries have too many aging people to sustain cur-
rent workforce policies and pension systems. Their challenges are exacerbated
by the medical and lifestyle-related challenges of longer life expectancy. Even
the healthiest people over 65 require higher levels of medical expenditure, and
increases in chronic disease and lifelong obesity add dramatically to these costs.
It’s not surprising that healthcare expenses per capita are rising at alarming rates
throughout the developed world.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are young-population societies: In-
dia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, most of Africa, much of Latin Amer-
ica, and many other emerging economies. If they don’t each generate at least
hundreds of thousands of jobs per year for the next 10 years, they will face an
immense population of unrooted, unsupported people. Most of these coun-
tries already have difficulties providing education and jobs for their young citi-
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